Copending patent application Ser. No. 07/213,719 filed June 30, 1988 by Lawrence H. Ragan and entitled Wristwatch Receiver Architecture describes an FM radio receiver suitable for paging applications, and constructed on a single integrated circuit chip having only a small number of off-chip components. It is desirable to minimize the number of discrete, off-chip components because it reduces the cost of the unit, provides additional space in the package formerly occupied by the discrete components, and makes the device less labor-intensive to assemble.
A mixer circuit in a receiver translates a signal received at one frequency to another frequency, termed an intermediate frequency (IF), at which the signal can be processed more conveniently and effectively. The intermediate frequency facilitates processing, filtering and detecting a signal with greater ease and efficiency than would be possible were the signal kept at the radio frequency at which it was transmitted and propagated. A problem inherent in all mixer circuits is generation of image frequency signals. When two signals are mixed, signal components are produced at the sum and difference of the two signal frequencies and at the harmonics of the frequencies. It is desirable to reduce or eliminate the image-frequency response of the mixer circuit, however it is often impractical to filter out the image frequency. Post-mixer filtering has been found to be inadequate because input signal images can be mixed to the same intermediate frequency as the desired signal. Image-rejection mixer circuits utilizing phase-shifting techniques are known, however such circuits have heretofore used transmission lines, operational amplifiers or L-C networks, none of which are conducive to implementation in a singlechip integrated circuit receiver.